Rethinking Negotiation Teaching

Rethinking Negotiation Teaching is the first of four volumes of the Rethinking Negotiation Teaching project. Edited by Christopher Honeyman, James Coben and Giuseppe De Palo and with dozens of contributing authors, this volume is one of two major products from the first year of the project. Honeyman, Coben and De Palo are also guest editors of the April 2009 edition of Harvard's Negotiation Journal, a special issue* with nine articles drawn from this initiative.

Published 2009 by DRI Press (an imprint of the Dispute Resolution Institute at Michell Hamline School of Law) the book is available from Amazon.com (directly via this link, with free shipping); with the generous financial support of the JAMS Foundation, every chapter in the book is also availablefree in PDF format. Translations in Mandarin and Arabic are also without charge.

Copyright: We encourage teachers to use any chapters in your teaching and training. There is no charge provided that copies are distributed at or below cost, you notify the publisher (sharon.press@mitchellhamline.edu) that you are using the material and describe the context, and you provide attribution as follows: Copyright 2009 DRI Press, Mitchell Hamline School of Law, Author and Chapter Title.

Description from DRI Press: In May 2008, more than 50 of the world's leading negotiation scholars and trainers gathered in Rome, Italy to embark on a multi-year effort to develop "second generation" global negotiation education. The participants' post-conference writings -- the 22 chapters contained in RETHINKING NEGOTIATION TEACHING -- critically examine what is currently taught in executive style negotiation courses and how we teach it, with special emphasis on how best to "translate" teaching methodology to succeed with diverse, global audiences. Collectively, the chapters provide a blueprint for designing courses to take account of the most recent discoveries in the growing, multi-disciplinary science of negotiation and confronting the challenges of teaching negotiation in cross-cultural settings.

Several years ago Chris Honeyman and Andrea Kupfer Schneider, along with dozens of friends and colleagues, daringly conspired to capture the best negotiation ideas, frameworks, and techniques from a wide-ranging set of academic disciplines. Their project began with a series of conferences and culminated in the publication of The Negotiator’s Fieldbook in 2006. That nearly eight hundred-page volume is now an essential reference for serious scholars and practitioners alike.

More recently many of the same contributors set out on an equally ambitious venture, namely to stimulate and document what they call “the second generation of global negotiation education.” In a world where the economy has been rapidly globalizing – and where conflict is rife – they challenged the notion that traditional American pedagogy necessarily meets the needs of individuals and organizations elsewhere. (Indeed, they wondered out loud whether even at home, that model has gotten rather long in the tooth.)

Last spring Hamline University School of Law, in cooperation with the JAMS Foundation and ADR Center Italy, convened a four-day conference in Rome that attracted university teachers and private trainers from more than a score of different countries. The setting and time of year was matchless, as was the collegiality, but the work was hard, as people good-naturedly challenged one another on what they teach and how their students learn.

Alas, the printed page can’t do justice to the atmosphere. Primavera in Roma simply has to be experienced firsthand, as does the good company of those colleagues who were fortunate enough to be there last year. Thanks, however, to their ongoing work, in particular to the leadership of Chris Honeyman, Jim Coben, and Giuseppe De Palo, we are able to present here a rich sampling of the new ideas and approaches that were generated in that session. Chris, Jim, and Giuseppe have prepared an introduction to the special section that comprises most of this issue. It sketches how the various contributions complement one another. They also describe their larger project which, among other things, will soon yield a book.

As a result, I’ll limit myself to three broader comments here. First and foremast, of course, is an expression of thanks to their entire crew for producing such a diverse and stimulating set of papers. I say that from my editorial perch, but also on behalf of fellow teachers and our many students, all of us who stand to benefit from this work.Second, in reading the articles, I was repeatedly reminded about how substance and process are inextricably intertwined in our teaching. Stances and techniques that are appropriate for some topics may not be right for other material – or for other kinds of students, for that matter. While the focus here is on pedagogy, many of the same substantive negotiation issues that were explored in the Fieldbook resurface here, though cast in a new light.

Finally, the venture behind these contributions nicely complements and enriches work currently being undertaken at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School under the umbrella of Negotiation Pedagogy@PON. That initiative, co-chaired by Larry Susskind, Melissa Manwaring, and me, has sponsored both small workshops and larger conferences. Indeed, within weeks of the arrival of this issue on your doorstep, we will welcome teachers from a wide range of fields to examine mediation pedagogy in hopes of generating new tools and approaches in that particular field.

While some of us are of an age that we cannot claim “second generation” status, we applaud the hopeful audacity of Chris, Jim, and the colleagues who with good reason believe that we all can become more effective – and fulfilled – in our teaching.Michael Wheeler, Harvard Business School